


as cold as stone

by Demeter



Category: The Huntsman (Movies)
Genre: Gen, manipulation isn't necessarily the worst thing a queen can do, ravenna and snow should have loved each other, ruling sucks, this fic is somewhat messy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-14
Updated: 2017-03-14
Packaged: 2018-10-05 06:15:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10299431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Demeter/pseuds/Demeter
Summary: The first night, with Ravenna burning and a Kingdom delirious with celebration, Snow White climbs the long, spiraling stairs to her tower.





	

The first night, with Ravenna burning and a Kingdom delirious with celebration, Snow White climbs the long, spiraling stairs to her tower. 

Each step she takes, more of the stairway crumbles. Stone breaks away with the mere press of boot to rock. The air is bitter with ash and is cold with winter frost.

Rust flakes off the old iron bars and there are tiny things that scuttle out of her way with each step. The veneer of rot and death clings still to the land, to the people, to the very walls and she feels only the heaviness of her armor and the bone-deep bruises of muscles in her thighs. They are still unused to the long paths she has taken to be here; once upon a time, she would pace this room from one end to the other and not need more than a breath. Some days, she would run from one corner to another, run in a circle around the room, almost weep with the fact that she can never jump so high, never run so fast, never be so out of breath as she was with William in that apple tree.

Snow White looks down the long hallways to her cell. She slowly makes her way to the room that kept her locked away like an ill secret, a pox-child. The door is hanging off its hinges; Finn must have been very angry indeed when she'd thrown the nail out and slashed his face.

Her stomach turns a little at the memory. She has spent enough time in the world beyond, now, to know what he wanted, what he'd always wanted. Sometimes, she wonders why he didn’t take what he wanted sooner. Sometimes, she wants to believe that there was some vestige of kindness in him. Other times, she knows it’s because he feared his sister more than he wanted her. Snow White pushes the door to the side, ignoring the clatter it makes on the ground as the hinges finally give way. 

The room is as it was.

A thin layer of gray dust has settled onto the bare contents; the rough table is ingrained with dirt, even with all her hopeless scrubbing of years gone by. There is a pile of dead flowers in the corner; flowers that the occasional guard brings her, a sour sort of pity in their hearts. But they’re never the ones to last long. They disappear like water around a river bend, ghostly sparks on the foggy banks. Many a time Snow White wishes to thank someone and that someone disappears from her ever-shifting roster of guards and somehow, she knows they are dead.

Whether because of their pity or due the Queen's own capricious nature, she knew not. And that was the worst, wasn’t it? The not-knowing. 

Her hand brushes the table, rubs the rough-hewn against the callouses of her palm. A splinter wedges its way into the hard pad of her thumb. Against the cold, the pain is incosequential.

Snow White crosses to her bed, a bare breath of a distance. It is as if she never left. 

She lays down amid her old sheets, feels the lumps of a bed too-long used, and feels her skin go white and cold as snow. 

The night is frosty, winter is not yet gone; ice crystals bead like tiny diamonds on her damp, raven hair. Her lips darken to burgundy with the slowing of her blood and it is as if no time has passed at all, and she is still prisoner, still locked away in that tower of nothingness, where she prays every day that the Queen's brother will not come stare at her as she sleeps, that the guards will not ignore her, that the Queen – no, Ravenna – will come and brush her hair and touch her face and tell her _that she will not replace her mother, but they will be good for each other_.

The clamor of celebration continues, distant, from the ramparts below. The wind blows through the tiny window and the stars glint from the slice of dark night she sees.

Snow White waits. And nothing happens.

Ravenna is dead. Finn will never watch her again.

She will be a new Queen, their new Queen, and Snow is suddenly very, very frightened. She has never been a Queen, never known what it means to rule with kindness and steel, mercy and justice. Her legs swing back up and over the side of the bed before she draws them close to her chest, hugs them tightly. She huddles, head bent to her knees. Her heart races in her chest and there is a pain that presses against her throat and a wellspring of sorrow that thickens the knot at her chest.

Oh, if her mother had not died, she would have given stringent and strict instruction to her daughter in how to be a queen. She would of what to do, of what to say. She would be the guiding source of confidence and surety. Her father would guide her along in benign munifence 

Or perhaps. Snow smiles. Everyone is fallible. Everyone. She knows now.

Ravenna might have slashed her father’s throat and she might have destroyed their kingdom, but none of that would have happened if he had not wanted to take Ravenna for his own. Perhaps her mother would have been the same. Perhaps she would be… no, not cruel. Perhaps jealous. or spiteful. Or even cold. 

But her mother is dead. Her father is dead. And even Ravenna is dead. There is no one to teach her, no one to tell her what to do, how to serve her people. No one to lead her path, no one to lead her mind. 

Snow wishes she could run, flee the lands to those across the sea, where no one would know her as the princess in the tower, would think her only one girl amid many. She would not be Queen, would not be a ruler of a crushed kingdom.

She would only be Snow White. And that would have been enough for her. 

It is a dream. An impossible dream; Snow has to laugh. She knows, she knows so well that she fought for her kingdom. She fought for her people. To abandon them now would be against her very nature and it would not matter if this doomed her to the heavy burden of ruling for the rest of her days. She is who she is. Snow forces herself to stand, to unlink her knees from her chest. 

The room is smaller, is grayer, is quieter. She closes and listens to the farways sounds of her lands and people. 

The heavy weight of leather shoes comes to a stop in the doorway and Snow knows her Huntsman is behind her. She doesn't turn around to smile at him or to acknowledge his presence; sometimes, she still feels strange around him. As a child, Snow White was surrounded by sons of courtiers and visiting royal children – her father was a kind King, but he was not so kind as to let the kitchen girl or the stable boy run wild with her. So she is bewildered by his rough and tumble ways

“Princess?”

Snow White does turn, because it would be beyond rude to not respond to his question. He is dark against the shadow of the doorway; the broken bars cast strange half-shadows on his face and for a moment, Snow White is tossed back in time, back when she would hold her burrowing shivers to her heart as she waited and waited and waited for Finn to walk away.

But then he coughs and he scratches at his dirty face and her disorientation flees, like little monsters afraid of a darker, bigger bad. Snow White has to smile. The Huntsman as both a hero and the big, bad wolf. Just like her mother used to tell.

“Hello.”

The Huntsman strides up to her and takes a good look around the room. The confusion stutters its way around his expression as he takes in the bare bed and cold, stone floors. “What is this place? It looks like a prison cell.”

Snow White doesn't answer. Instead, she presses a hand against a small indentation on the wall, an indentation that came from day after day, week after week, year after year of standing in the same spot over and over and craning her legs as high as they could go to catch a glimpse of the sun, the sky, the birds. The little scrap of window was her only escape and she remembers standing there for hours at a time, a keen in her heart. After but a few weeks in the open, she can't ever imagine being imprisoned for years upon years.

Perhaps Ravenna did have some kindness in her. Snow White would not have survived a prison of that sort as a young adult, on the cusp of freedom and the wide, sweet world. Only a child, still breathing the air of fairytales and believing that good would triumph in the end, might have come out the other side and remained as she is. 

She smiles. No need for the Huntsman to hear her tale of woe. Twas not truly a tale at all; the true horror were all those girls, all those young children who saw death stare them down and swallow their youth, their happiness, their dreams. 

No, Snow did not pity herself. She walks to him and takes his arm, threads her thin arm through his. A far away part of her notes the slight darkening of his eyes, the softness that floods his non-expression. She can feel his muscles tense up ever so slightly and knows that she is manipulating him. Her heart stutters, but hardens at the same time. 

He is looking for redemption and he always will be. He sees in her a chance to make up for the past and to absolve himself of whatever crimes linger in his gullet. Snow knows to treat him kindly is to take advantage. If she truly wishes to be kind, she should very well banish him from her side and send him far away to the seas so that he can gain some true peace. 

But no Queen is truly that kind. 

She feels guilty about her thoughts, and only for a moment. He is utterly loyal and he is honest. She will need that on the long road before her. It is best she bind him to her before he thinks to leave. She lays the stones out for their path. 

“Tis a room of no consequence, now that you’re here.” 

\- fin -

**Author's Note:**

> While the movie, frankly, sucks, there was something about it that blew life into this.


End file.
